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Comment by coffeefirst | Hacker News Reader

There were a few places I went to in Europe (not Sweden, maybe one day) where I was absolutely shocked how high the level of trust was. If you have trust, you don’t need rules, because you tell people to be safe and wear masks and they do it because they want to beat the virus.

The US is the opposite. The results speak for themselves.

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Yeah, that's how New Zealand got rid of Covid completely, trust in the government and science. But, the government didn't abuse that trust by being very transparent about the response, science, and data modelling.

And by "the results," you mean fewer deaths per million than Sweden (or France, or Italy, or the UK...)? https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

You should read past the first page of that table. Germany and Denmark have 1/3 the death per capita of the US. The Czechs have 1/10 of it.

I’m not saying the US has the best outcomes. I’m saying European high-trust culture has nothing to do with the results. European countries have done much better and much worse.

They absolutely have, I didn't mean to suggest "trust is a magic bullet that solves your problems." Of course not, that'd be ridiculous.

I'm saying in a higher trust culture, you'll see better compliance on everything we ought to be doing even without imposing strict rules. That's an advantage, and it means how strict the rules are doesn't necessarily match how people changed their behavior.

That's all.

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